Point of no return.

Hah.

If there was a point of no return, he thought snidely, I probably passed it at the age of two. Andie was wrong. You can't change yourself no matter how hard you want to, no matter how hard you try. He'd tried. He had. But he was never going to be an effortless A-student who took pleasure in acing tests. He was never going to be Ivy League material. He was never going to have any great ambitions in life. He wasn't going to change the world, or discover anything more exciting than a new type of PBJ. However much he tried, he was never going to be... Dawson.

He couldn't run any more. He couldn't help wishing his legs would just go numb like a normal person's instead of this relentless nagging wrench, the lead-weight feeling that kept on dragging them forward one by one, the pendulum motion that was all that kept him from falling. His hair was plastered to his head, his shirt to his body. The tiny sharp pebbles in his shoes rattled against each other like miniature marbles. The thorn in his side twisted with each new stride. Each breath clawed its way out of his chest like a feral cat; his throat felt raw and hoarse. His hands were bleeding from tiny cuts that appeared from nowhere; the blurred landscape was greener now, but he barely noticed through a blur of sweat and tears and rain.

At least there were no more staring faces; inquisitive, curious, indifferent, impassive, wanting to know why a sixteen-year-old boy was running like a scared dog through the streets of such a little town. Not one face he saw showed compassion, or sympathy, or even concern. No-one cared why he was running like this. They just wanted to watch.

He didn't even know why he was running any more. Away from his father, the asshole? The father he was afraid of facing, afraid of running away from, but most of all afraid of becoming? Away from Jack and Jen, their concern and guilt? Away from his confusing mother, sometimes loving and sometimes cold? Away from Joey, her self-absorbed problems and self-pity? Or just away from himself?

He certainly wasn't running to anything.

Or so he thought, until in one crashing second the pain in his side stabbed into him, his breath finally gasped and faltered, and his legs lost their rhythm and sent him headlong onto the ground.

He lay facedown on the wet grass for a few minutes, racking, gasping, pressing his face into the mud and moisture, until he could breathe and move and see enough to sit up and realize where he was. And it was the ruins, of course.

In one of his rare moments of black irony, he smiled inwardly, pulling a tuft of grass out by the roots and twisting it around his fingers. Terrific. I feel like I'm losing my mind because I'm missing her so much, and I end up in the one place I never took her. My place with Tamara. Tammy and I. Slowly, he let himself wander into the dangerous area of his mind that had been, that was, Tamara and he. It had always been a secret, a place nobody but he was ever allowed to go. No-one was ever meant to know; now Dawson knew, and Chris, and Joey and Jen and Andie, and no doubt Jack too. But they never talked about it to him, and he never mentioned it to anybody. Once, shyly and delicately, Andie had probed a little, and he'd told her a little, skimming the surface and minimizing the importance. It was the danger that had excited him the most, he realized now. The fear of discovery, the realization that every kiss and touch and stolen look was not only secret but almost certainly illegal, had made every moment intense and arousing and frightening.

It was never meant to last. He knew it couldn't, he knew it wouldn't, from the very moment they kissed. Staring into the distance, still ripping unseeingly at the damp grass, he screwed up his eyes against the setting sun, and sank deeper inwards. Tamara was still important to him; she couldn't help but be so. She was the first person other than his friends and family he really cared about; even if it hadn't been real love, it had been deep and it had hurt along with the happiness. She would always be his first no matter what happened in the future. It was brief, it was intense, it was gone, and he knew that was the way it needed to be. Still, he missed her a little. He always would.

And now here he was, squinting into dimming light, having run away from his family, his friends, his house. Thinking about his forbidden affair with a woman more than twice his age whom he'd known for so short a time and not seen for months. He sighed, and shifted his aching legs. It felt like he'd pulled a muscle in his left leg - but the pain made him feel alive. Like he hadn't felt since she left. Without her, his life was a pale half-shadow, a going through the motions.

Life was so simple when we were five......

"Give it back!" demanded the tiny five-year-old brunette, grabbing onto the other end of the jigsaw puzzle the dark-haired boy had lifted off the ground. He gave her a skeptical look. "I thought girls just played with dolls. Anyway, I'm using it right now. Let it go."

She scowled at him. "I hate dolls. I hate those stuck-up girls who play with dolls all the time. Did you see that girl called Abby? She stuck her fingernails in my arm when I accidentally bumped her. Anyway," she said, pausing for breath, "this is my puzzle. I just put it down when I went to help out that blonde kid."

"Well, it's mine now," he said, yanking on it and being surprised by her strength. "Let go."

She narrowed her eyes, holding his gaze. "No way, jerk."

"Let. Go. Of. It," he said, punctuating each word with another pull.

"I'm as strong as you are," she said, glaring fiercely. "I'm not a weak little girl."

"I'll fight you for it," he offered defiantly, somehow not at all certain that he could win.

"You're on," she said calmly, putting the puzzle aside and rolling up her sleeves. He copied her movements, not at all sure of how to start, watching her silently.

"Hey, cut it out!" came another kid's voice. Pacey turned his head, and saw a blonde kid tugging on the girl's arm, just as small as she was. "We can resolve this. You don't have to be aggressive."

His eyes widened. "You talk big."

The blonde kid smiled goofily. "My mom is very smart."

Pacey ignored that. "My name's Pacey."

"I'm Dawson," he said, grinning. "Hi. And this is Joey."

"Joey" scowled at him again. "And it's not a boy's name. It's short for Josephine. I don't like your name either."

Pacey laughed; he couldn't help liking this fiery girl. "Is she always like this?" he asked the more placid-seeming Dawson. He nodded.

"Yeah. But I think she likes you. You're lucky. Just don't ever call her Josephine and expect to live."

They laughed, even Joey, and reached out hands to one another. Friends.

Darkness.

Dampness.

Cold breeze.

The faint sound of his name.

The sensations crept back one by one into a distant brain from a numb body. He was still lying on the grass in the ruins, almost soaked through with dew and faintly shivering. He raised himself up into a sitting position, and strained to pierce the blackness. He heard his name again, and saw dimly the outline of Joey's tall thin shape striding over the grass towards him.

"Hey, Witter," she said casually. "Jen called me all freaked out - said you ran out of her house or something, you weren't home or at Screen Play, and she didn't know where to find you. I had to help Bessie clean out the Ice House and I didn't have time for your amateur dramatics, but she talked me into it. I figured you'd be here."

His mouth twisted. "Thanks for your concern," he said sarcastically. "It's much appreciated."

She returned his glare with equal force and threw herself onto the grass a few feet away. "No problem." She stretched. "Obsessing about your failed relationships again?"

"Last I checked, my most recent relationship was doing just fine, thank you," he said angrily, watching her smirk. Trying to wipe off the Cheshire cat look. "Unlike yours."

Her grin disappeared. She almost snarled at him. "At least my relationship was doing fine before my boyfriend turned my father in. At least I broke up with him and not vice versa. At least my boyfriend isn't in a mental institute. At least he hasn't completely lost his mind." She was standing, and yelling.

"At least I don't have a drug dealer for a father and an unwed mother for a sister," he said tightly between clenched teeth. "At least I'm not a Dawson-dating sexually repressed waitress with a serious attitude problem."

Her eyes narrowed. "Well, I'm so sorry to interrupt your little wallow in self-pity by reminding you that other people have bigger problems. I'm so sorry to be the one that tells you the truth about your nutcase of a girlfriend. I'm really sorry that I actually came here to find out what happened to you and try to make you feel better. But I guess you blew that. See you later."

He pulled himself to his feet in one motion and yelled back. "You may have bigger problems, Joey, but I have big enough problems of my own. My best friend is gone. You're hardly the world's most sympathetic person. My girlfriend's in Providence, and I can't talk to Jack and Jen because I don't feel like I know them well enough. Andie is mentally unstable, my brother's a jerk, and my father hits me, Joey. Did you know that? Did you ever notice how often I had bruises when we were small? Jen noticed today, but you never did. Why not, Joey? Did you just not care?" He realized he was gripping her wrist tightly, and she was squirming away.

"Let go of me," she said curtly.

He dropped her wrist, but continued to hold her in his eyes. "Did you care? Answer me."

"I didn't see," she admitted, eyes downcast, sounding slightly repentant for the first time. Looking up, she lost her apologetic expression; her eyes sparked fiercely instead. "And I'd stop kidding yourself about Andie. She's lost to you, Pacey. When she comes back, it'll be different. I wouldn't depend on her."

He shook his head, beginning to shake. "No. I trust her. I love her."

"But does she love you?" she said meanly, beginning to move away. He sank to his knees on the wet grass, almost prayerful. "Tell me the truth, Pacey. She's been away for weeks. How many times has she called? How many times has she written?"

She hit home; he thought of the one call, the few letters. The rock of his existence was beset, threatening to crumble and leave him drowning. His whole body was trembling; he shook his head constantly; denying, denying, denying. "No. She loves me. She has to, she has to...."

"Don't count on it," she said, leaving. Throwing one last painful dart over her shoulder. "Goodbye."

She's lying, he thought desperately, clutching at his head with both hands as his shaking became more intense. She loves me. She has to. She couldn't...

No. No. No. No. No! She loves me, he begged the sky. Please, God. She loves me. The sky had no answer.

He fell back onto the grass, and let the darkness take him.

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